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The Influence of Transformational Leadership Style on Innovation Behaviours: The Case of the Government Sector of the UAE

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Proceedings of the II International Triple Helix Summit (THS 2018)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Civil Engineering ((LNCE,volume 43))

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Abstract

The UAE is putting a lot of efforts and investments to increase its innovation capacity within its various entities to be able to meet citizens needs. Therefore, the country is heavily investing in the development of its human resources. Previous studies have illustrated the importance of having an environment that is conducive to innovation within organisations, and that the innovation behaviour of employees is impacted by the style of leadership of the line managers of these employees. Transformational leadership was in particular found to be the most effective style in terms of fostering employees’ innovation. However, such relation was not explored in a country like the UAE. This paper aims to fill this gap, by studying how the transformational leadership style in a public organisation within the UAE as perceived by the employees impacted the innovation behaviour. A questionnaire was used to gather input for the study, adopting 2 widely accepted scales to measure the 2 variables under study. The results indicated that employees perceived their line managers to practice moderate levels of transformational leadership, and employees exercise moderate level of innovative behaviour. A correlation and a regression analyses were conducted to study the relationship between the variables, and the findings indicated that transformational leadership has a moderate impact on innovation behaviour of employees within the government sector in the UAE. This finding not only fill a gap in the literature, but also suggest practical actions that could be taken to increase transformational leaders within the country. A main limitation in the study is the target sample achieved, which is not only low, but also not very representative of multiple governmental entities within the country, which limits generalizability. Future research should take into consideration these limitation, as well as the differences that the demographics of the respondents could bring to the findings.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Business and Law, The British University in Dubai, PO BOX 345015, Dubai, United Arab Emirates

    Ahmad Abdulqader & Khalid Al Marri

Authors
  1. Ahmad Abdulqader
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  2. Khalid Al Marri
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Khalid Al Marri .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. The British University in Dubai, Dubai, United Arab Emirates

    Abid Abu-Tair

  2. The British University in Dubai, Dubai, United Arab Emirates

    Abdelmounaim Lahrech

  3. The British University in Dubai, Dubai, United Arab Emirates

    Khalid Al Marri

  4. The British University in Dubai, Dubai, United Arab Emirates

    Bassam Abu-Hijleh

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Abdulqader, A., Al Marri, K. (2020). The Influence of Transformational Leadership Style on Innovation Behaviours: The Case of the Government Sector of the UAE. In: Abu-Tair, A., Lahrech, A., Al Marri, K., Abu-Hijleh, B. (eds) Proceedings of the II International Triple Helix Summit. THS 2018. Lecture Notes in Civil Engineering, vol 43. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-23898-8_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-23898-8_1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-23897-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-23898-8

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